Pokemon: Time after Time
by Lathi Arcanus
Summary: Alex Crowley is more than a tad obsessed with the ancient Pokemon World. Unhappy with modern thought on the human/pokemon dynamic, he explores the relics of the past in hopes of finding a better way.
1. In Which the Exposition is Overly Utiliz...

Right-o. The first chapter of my first fanfic, more or less. You all know what that means: basic character development and bits of the plot. Not a whole lot happens at this point, I'm afraid. Dunno how long this monster'll finally turn out to be, but you'll know as soon as I do. It's a "new trainer" fic, more or less, though I'm sure Mr. Crowley would take offense at your calling him such. The basic premise and main character are mine, of course. As always, other materials/concepts/characters belong to their respective owners and apologies go out if they take offence at my using them. But let's face it, you wouldn't be here unless I was. For that matter, neither would I...

**06-02-02**: Well, I've gone back and edited a bit. Tried to de-twink Alex a bit and removed some phrases I thought were a bit too clumsy or otherwise unacceptable within the context of my vision. Better or worse... who knows?

-- Lathi

**In Which Exposition is Overly Utilized**

A chill breeze danced through the moonlit forest on the ridge above and the rustling leaves shared their secrets in furtive whispers. Perhaps, one might imagine, they spoke of the strange company making it's way along the stony path below.

A dark canine form, nose to the ground, prowled the long-abandoned roadway. Occasionally it would glance back over its shoulder to deliver a curt series of soft growls and barks to it's companions. The angular metal bird that followed close behind gave no sign, but the hunched shadow astride its back nodded in silent acknowledgment. The inky black bird perched upon the  
rider's shoulder would often punctuate these exchanges with a sharp caw, for which it was hissed at in annoyance. Miffed, the murkrow would fluff its feathers and pointedly ignore its master until the next report. They continued on in this manner for another hour until the unmistakable glare of civilization began to obscure the horizon.

As they drew closer, the distant glow resolved itself into a ring of powerful floodlights surrounding a vast archeological dig. Scattered here and there were large, roped-off grids. The nearby cliffs had been heavily excavated and revealed a collection of rather decrepit ruins, some differentiated from the rubble only by the presense of an obvious bit of carved stone. Scattered here and there, with no discernible pattern, were oddly-shaped nodules of an unknown striped mineral. Just beyond the circle of light was a cluster of tents, trailers, and simple sheds. Unlike the brightly lit excavation area, the camp was dark; its residents resting up for another day of painstaking research. 

When they reached the edge of the dig, the rider summoned the houndour to his side and climbed down from his road-weary skarmory mount. Both pokemon were rewarded with a bit of dried meat from the pouch tied to his belt. Not liking to be left out, the murkrow, which had since perched itself on the skarmory's head, squawked until he, too, was fed.

"Anubis, Mune, excellent work, the both of you," said the muffled voice that issued from deep within the folds of the rider's cloak, "please wait here and get some rest. I shouldn't be too long. Baku, you're with me."

A portion of the rider's shadow seemed to detach itself and rose silently into the air. Its ragged edges took on a sharper, more regular outline and a pair of eyes began to glow eerily in the gloom. 

"Haun?", the shadow said.

"Yes, we're here," the rider said. He then turned, and stepped towards the camp. The haunter yawned and drifted after its master.

The rider paused for a long moment, body slack and head bowed as if deep in thought. He soon snapped back to attention and strode purposefully into the silent campsite. His heavy boots crunched in the loose gravel as he wound his way towards a large tent straddling the line between the camp and the dig. Its heavy canvas walls glowed like a paper lantern and revealed the silhouette of some diligent researcher burning the midnight oil. As he drew closer, the rider heard a soft feminine voice muttering to itself in accented English peppered with the odd bit of French. He stopped short of the partially open flap and looked inside. 

Seated at a folding metal table against the back wall was a young woman in dusty khakis. Her attention seemed divided between the stone tablet propped up across the table and the various books and papers scattered around it. She would trace a line with her finger across the slab's surface, then flip and shuffle through the other documents. When she finally found what she  
sought, she'd scribble something down in the notebook that lay open before her. The girl was so engrossed in her work that she didn't notice as the cloaked figure slipped inside.

"Sometimes, I think that boy was right. This would go so much easier if the ancients wrote more plainly..." she said with a heavy sigh.

The rider chuckled, "sometimes it almost seems like they did it on purpose, eh Doctor?"

The girl yelped, then turned to face the unexpected voice. In the dimly lit area beyond the glow of her table lamp, two broadly smiling faces wrapped in darkness appeared to hover several feet from the floor. On one was a broad Cheshire-cat grin that glinted coldly in the feeble light, the other bore a jagged red gash of a mouth that glowed like hot coals.

"Wh-what are you doing here? " she said, her initial fright starting to give way to slight annoyance, "I thought we were rid of you months ago."

"Huh?" the stranger said, puzzled, "But I just got..." He trailed off as the realization struck. "Ah! My apologies, doctor. Where _are_ my manners?"

The rider stepped forward into the light and flipped back the hood of his traveling cloak, revealing a wooden mask skillfully crafted to resemble the somewhat unsettling visage of a gengar. Reaching behind his head, he loosened the straps that secured the mask and slipped it off. The round faced young man ran his fingers back through his messy, brick-red hair and grinned sheepishly.

"Dreadfully sorry about that, professor. I forget that I'm wearing this thing most of the time. I hope I didn't frighten you _too_ badly."

"No, it is alright, I suppose. I will live, no? What about the other one?"

"Oh, he's real enough, but mostly harmless," the rider reassured her.

"If you say so, " she replied, a bit uncertain of how to take that last remark, "But you still have not said why you have come. I know there are many things here of great value, but they belong in a public museum, not in some thief's private collection. If that is why you are here, I must insist that you leave," The young archeologist held out a pokeball, "Now."

"I'm no thief, Dr. Eve, I promise," the young man said, spreading his arms wide to show he was unarmed, "My name's Alex -- Alexander Crowley. And I came here because I was in need of your assistance. Nothing more." 

With a sharp tug, the pokeball jumped out of Dr. Eve's hand and fell to the floor, rolling to a stop at the young man's feet. She gasped in surprise and glared at the haunter. 

"No, Baku didn't do that, I did. Now please, don't threaten me again. We're all adults here, right?" he smiled, and toed the ball back across the floor. "Well, more or less..."

"Yes, well," Eve said, trying to keep her composure, "you said you needed help with something? Not that I seem to have much of a choice in the matter..."

"Oh, we all have choices, doctor. If you want me to leave, all you have to do is ask. But I believe you might want to hear me out; I wish to know what you can tell me about this..." 

With that, Alex drew a fist-sized object from within his cloak and placed it on the table. Against reason and expectation, the golden octahedron stood up on point and began to rotate itself slowly counterclockwise. The light from the table lamp reflected strangely on its triangular facets and appeared as a pale glow pulsing from inside the artifact. Observing the object in action, Dr. Eve inhaled sharply.

"Do you have any idea what that is?" she asked breathlessly.

"Not really. I was hoping that was where you would come in. All I have is this bit of carved stone I found with the artifact," he replied, handing her a small hunk of rock. "The writing is definitely Pokemopolitan in origin, which is why I brought it to you."

At the mention of her life's work, the young archeologist managed to tear her gaze away from the spinning artifact long enough to study the spiral-shaped glyph engraved on the stone.

"Whirlpool? Whirlwind? But it should be carved in the other direction... and where is the rest of this?"

"Oh, um, yeah. Well, I think there're still bits of it in my boots somewhere. But I don't think they'd do you any good..."

"You... broke it?" she asked, her voice tinged with anger.

"Well, uh, technically I think you could say I did. But I didn't do it on purpose. It's all Baku's fault, anyway."

"Haunter!?!"

Alex turned, "Yes, it is. If you'd bothered to tell me that there was writing on the other side of that wall, I wouldn't have smashed it in like that."

"Hau!"

"It's no use arguing, Ba. _I _know you screwed up. _You_ know you screwed up. Just  
accept it. Too late to do anything about it now, anyway."

"Haunt!" 

The pokemon made a face at Alex which froze in mid-air while it's body turned away and left the  
tent. 

"Anyway, like I was saying, it was an accident. We were in North Africa following up on a rumor about a ruined temple in the middle of the desert. I finally located the ruins, but the entrance had collapsed and I couldn't get in. So, I sent Baku inside to scout around for anything useful while I examined things from the outside. A couple of hours later, he came back and led me to a spot on one of the interior walls that I _could _reach and said that there was something on the other side. I broke through the stone rather easily and realized that I must have come in on the back side of a niche in the temple walls. As I was scraping the debris out of the hole I'd made, I noticed that writing on the rock I gave you. Once I realized the mistake, I could see that it would be impossible to salvage any more of the slab, the fragmentation was just too extensive. But I think that artifact almost makes up for it," he paused, finally taking a breath.

"You... just... _broke_ it...," she said again. 

"Yup, smashed it up real goo-- Uh-oh."

Staring at the fragment, Eve began to mutter under her breath. The fire in her eyes grew brighter, then the air was rent with a blistering stream of French, coming high and fast. Though Alex didn't understand the language, her meaning was painfully clear. 

He decided then that he should probably wait to ask her about the artifact itself in the morning.


	2. In Which A Nasty Turn is Taken

Yup. Despite virtually no critical response _what_soever, I've decided to finally go ahead and work on the rest o' this monster. Had a major case of hack's block, lo, these past few months. But today I felt inspired to inflict further pain on my audience.

Well... here ya go. Standard caveats and apologies apply. Void where prohibited.

-- Lathi

**In Which A Nasty Turn is Taken **

The sun beat down mercilessly upon the backs of the busy archeologists, but few stopped to take notice. Though the Pokemopolis dig had been going on for several months now, new items were uncovered almost daily, urging the scientists to keep up their meticulous exploration of the crumbling ruins. The abundance of artifacts and twisted, huddled skeletons, both human and pokemon, bore silent witness to the swiftness with which The Great Powers of Destruction had laid waste to the once-magnificent city. Often, the researchers would find the human remains piled close to what remained of the walls of a collapsed building with the skeleton of one or more pokemon scattered some distance away, evidence that the city's pokemon had attempted to defend their masters from the giants' onslaught. 

It was over one such tableau, the bones of young girl and her growlithe, that Alex found himself this afternoon. As detached as he would have liked to have been, these scenes never failed to move him. Such loyalty in the face of overwhelming odds spoke well of the connection the Ancients shared with their pokemon allies. He said a prayer for the spirits of the girl and her companion and moved on.

In the weeks that he'd been at the dig, Alex had come to know the ruins quite well. In its prime, this Pokemopolitan city must have been awe-inspiring. Initial surveys showed that the city proper had covered well over two square miles. Five, if you counted the agricultural lands that surrounded it. A minor feat in the modern era, to be sure, but outstanding by the standards of the day. It was little wonder that this city once stood proudly as the capital of the Pokemopolitan civilization. 

Though he usually enjoyed exploring the works of the Ancients, Alex was anxious to continue with his own research rather than watching the University team work on theirs. The site manager, Dr. Eve, was as interested as he in studying the item that she'd dubbed the vortex artifact, but her on-site resources were limited to works related to this site. However, she had promised to devote time to the mystery as soon as she returned to the University of Kanto. Meanwhile Alex had to content himself with poking around the site on his own why trying to stay out of the way of the official archeologists.

As he rounded the corner on the overgrown roadway, Alex spied a pair of figures heading towards him: a tall, bookish young man and a machoke hauling a pack of equipment. The researcher stopped as Alex walked past.

"Put the instruments down here, Sun. It's as good a place to start as any," he said and turned, "Good afternoon, Mr. Crowley. Destroy any other priceless treasures today?" 

The story of how Alex had come across the vortex artifact had quickly spread throughout the archeologists' camp, and it had endeared him to none. Most of them made a point to needle him about it at every opportunity. He'd long since given up getting mad over it all and usually ignored the jibes.

Alex scowls as he notices the scientist's pokeball-laden trainer's belt, but spares him a tirade. "No. Just bones n' boulders as far as the eye can see. What're you up to, then, Mallon?"

"The professor believes this might be the old market district. Sun and I are surveying the area and noting the sites that look promising. I'm hoping to find the remains of the Artisans guildhouse around here somewhere."

"Ah. Well good luck with that. I'm going to see if the good Doctor is ready to go back to the University yet. Later."

Mallon watches Alex intently as he walks away, then turns back to his assistant. "Right, Sun. I think we're done here. Pack up. We're heading back to camp."

* * *

An hour or so later, back in the makeshift library, Alex was once again trying to convince Dr. Eve that the research on the vortex artifact should take precedence. Unfortunately, she didn't see things that way.

"I'm so sorry, Monsieur Crowley, but I simply cannot return to the University at this time. There is still much work to be done here and I cannot spare even one day, let alone however many it would take to complete your research. I can appreciate your wish to move things along, but you must understand that there is nothing I can do."

"Oh," he sneered, "I suppose your team is too incompetent to work this site without you, then? If you have such little faith in your staff, I wonder how you justifying hiring them in the first place."

"That is not it at all!" Eve huffed. "This dig is my life's work! Since I was a little girl I've dreamed of seeing Pokemopolis... and now I am here. And I will not just ignore that because you believe your work is more important! Now I ask again that you please remain patient until I can spare the time for you, or take your leave of us. As you've said before, we all have choices. And this time, it is yours."

"Fine then. I'm gone. Give me the artifacts and I'll be on my way. Perhaps I can find someone else who will be more accommodating."

Any further arguments were abruptly cut off by the sound of an explosion from somewhere on the outskirts of the campsite. The pair rushes out of the tent and into a dense smoke cloud. Confused voices call out from all around as the other archeologists try to sort out exactly what is going on. Crowley and the Professor are buffeted by a strong wind which also pushes the smoke away. 

Mallon stands in the clearing before them, his worn and dirty work clothes replaced by a starched white Team Rocket uniform; a venomoth hovers over his left shoulder. The erstwhile researcher sneers, then looks somewhat embarrassed. He clears his throat and begins to recite:

"_To dissect the world for information  
To give all things an explanation  
To pronounce the virtues of the knowledge I love  
To expound on my wisdom to the stars above_

_Mallon!_

_Team Rocket blasting off at the speed of thought!  
Resistance is futile, it'll come to naught._"

Eve breathes in sharply, "Team Rocket? Not again!"

"Yes, _again_, dear Doctor. But those three idiots wouldn't know trash from treasure if it had a sign pointing it out... with pictures. No, you'll find that I, at least, know what I'm doing. And I'll be taking the vortex artifact now."

"Somehow, I doubt that," interrupted Alex, "for one thing, we're not going to just give it to you. For another, you'd have to get behind us to get it yourself."

Mallon laughs, "Already taken care of... Bacon! Return!"

A sandslash clutching a bag in his right claw comes charging out of the tent and slams into Alex, knocking him to the ground. It hands the sack over to Mallon who holds the artifacts aloft in triumph.

"Excellent work, Bacon," He returns the sandslash to its pokeball and grins smugly. "See! I told you I knew what was what. I'm certain to get a promotion out of this. No more fieldwork for me!" he gloats.

Alex pushes himself up onto his knees. "Again, I doubt it. Anubis, flamethrower!"

An eerie howl pierces the din and Alex's houndour bounds out of the wall of smoke surrounding the battle zone It stalks towards Mallon with tongues of fire flickering out from between its bared fangs. 

"Torch the bag and retrieve the artifacts. Burn him, too, if necessary."

Without hesitation, the dark pokemon looses a burst of fire towards the TR scientist. Mallon leaps away, but the flamethrower strikes the bag as Alex commanded and burns a hole in the bottom. Mallon spins around and holds out a pokeball in his other hand. He triggers the release and his machoke materializes between Anubis and himself. 

"Sun Tzu, Cross Chop!" With blinding speed, the fighter rushes forward and catches the houndour across the throat with the deadly double attack. Anubis collapses with a startled whuff and Mallon dashes off into the artificial smokescreen with the venomoth close behind.

Alex rushes to the side of his fallen pokemon and checks its pulse. "Right! That's _it_... Baku, Zap Cannon!"

His haunter fades into view before the machoke. Blue sparks begin to dance between its fingers as Baku starts a guttural chanting. Sun Tzu immediately strikes out after his master. The chanting comes to an end and Baku slams the heels of his hands together. A massive bolt of brilliant blue electricity arcs out of his cupped fingers and slams into the retreating pokemon. The machoke is blasted forward several feet and falls smoking to the ground with small arcs of energy playing along his body.

While the fallen pokemon is still sizzling, a motor roars to life within the gloom. It grows louder and Mallon breaks through the smoke cloud astride a motorcycle. He stops just long enough to retrieve Lao Tzu and speeds off waving his loot in the air. Dr. Eve activates her pokeball and calls forth her lone pokemon, a dugtrio. "Carver, don't let him get away. Dig a hole in his path."

The lightning-fast burrower dives underground and easily outpaces the fleeing motorcyclist. A quick loop, and a massive hole opens up in the road. Mallon swerves sharply and just barely misses falling in. However, the g-forces turn out to be too much for the weakened bag and the vortex artifact works its way out of the hole in the bottom. Intent on avoiding a wipeout, Mallon doesn't notice the lightening of his load and continues off into the growing darkness.


End file.
